Road development in the Barents Region is characterised by isolated
approaches divided by national borders. The first phase of STBR carried
out specific projects to study road safety, tourism and freight
terminals. STBR II aims to address the most obvious needs revealed in
the work of the first STBR phase as follows.

Road transport data are currently in isolated national databases and
not typically available to other experts. Now the Internet
technology allows sharing of this data. Technical measures will be
undertaken so as to make this data and information sharing possible
between the national road authorities.

The
main roads have been defined from the perspective of national
interest. However, big industries and businesses have a more global
view to their business development and road authorities have
difficulties to follow this up with new road investments. Also,
harmonisation of road corridor standards and maintenance practices
are necessary. Furthermore, the Barents road corridors will help
define the roads of the Northern Transport Axis between the EU,
Norway and Russia as proposed by the EU in Nov 2005.

The
Barents roads have a higher than average share of heavy goods
vehicles (HGV), which are accident-prone in winter. Conditions of
serious accidents will be analysed as well as common measures
recommended for preventing them from occurring.

WP 4
includes three subprojects

Setting up a road information sharing system over the Internet

Pilot project for establishing the road corridors of the Barents
region

Find out the most important demands that
industry in Barents will have on road transports in the future. The
knowledge will help the road authorities to set up future plans and
have a common understanding for the potential and challenges. It is
important that the road authorities can agree on what road corridors
connecting the industries and hubs between the countries are the
most important ones. The findings and material will work towards
helping the road regions setting up their national transport plans
and to achieve a better basis of political decisions on any
infrastructure investments.

Form
the basis of a common “quality standard” for roads serving heavy and
urgent transport, regarding load capacity and predictability of
transport time.

Project’s scope

The project shall have strong future orientation
and strategic focus. The work shall entail the following.

Research into the main industries’ demand for
road transport, as regards
- load capacity
- regularity, for example predictable transport time.

Find
out the important future road corridors from industry point of view.

Survey in the
four Barents countries, of
- legislation
on gross weight, axle load and vehicle dimensions for heavy
vehicles on the important corridors
- amount/frequency of temporary traffic restrictions on these roads,
due to weather conditions, seasonal reduction of bearing capacity
etc.
- known “bottlenecks” on the roads
- penetration of transport telematics solutions

Assessment of gap
between industries’ future demand for road standard and the current
state of the road network. The need is to form the basis of a common
“quality standard” for roads serving heavy and urgent transport,
regarding load capacity and predictability of transport time.

Road Corridor strategy
seminar/workshop for the primary stakeholders

Proposals for
improvement concerning administrative, legislative and technical
measures. Vision and strategy aiming at years 2010, 2015 and 2020.

The study should concentrate
onmain routes across
national borders, connecting important hubs and terminals of
industries.

Subproject # 2

Traffic Safety of Heavy Vehicles in Winter Timein
the Barents Region

Project
period:August 2006 –
April 2007.

Project objectives and scope

A deeper analysis of the influence of winter conditions on heavy traffic
accidents. The
main interest on the Heavy Traffic and Traffic Safety in the Barents
Region study, done in STBR I, was to improve traffic safety with respect
to heavy traffic in road corridors in the Barents Region. The traffic
accident statistics used were based on accidents registered by the
police and data taken from the national road authorities’ databases. The
statistics in STBR Iwere
based on general data from the databases of road authorities. There is
very detailed information available about the accidents in these
databases; every serious accident is separately documented. To find out
more, the detailed data should be analyzed.

A recent study in Finland (Ministry of transport and communications,
publication 31/2005) shows, that there is no significant difference in
heavy vehicle accident risk compared to traffic flow in winter and in
summer on national level in Finland. However, in the Barents region the
risk was found to be higher in winter. This research should find out
what the reasons for that are.
The results should present profoundly justified answers to questions
like

Is the higher risk of heavy vehicle accidents in winter caused by
snow, low friction, freezing temperature, or is there another factor
connected to winter weather conditions?

Is driver fatigue caused by driving in darkness a factor?

Is there significant difference in types of accidents in winter
compared to summer months?

In most cases the driver of the heavy vehicle is not guilty for the
accident. However, the study in Finland shows that in winter the
driver of the heavy vehicle is more often the guilty part than in
summer. Is this true in Barents region as well?

Does the fact that roads tend to be narrower in the winter because
of snow on the sides have any influence on accidents?

In Finland the worst month seems to be January, in Sweden February
and in Norway and Russia March, is this just a coincidence?

The project on heavy traffic safety in winter might concentrate on these
issues but should not be limited to them. The work will probably reveal
new questions, which also should be answered.

Measures to improve heavy traffic safety in winter conditions must be
brought up based on the analysis. Answers should be found on many
questions concerning road authorities, such as

Deeper study of the traffic accidents during winter time with heavy
vehicles in the Barents region. The study must give answers to why
the accidents have happened.

Proposals for measures to improve the traffic safety. The input is
the deeper studies carried out. This includes a wide range of
measures and on all levels, such as measures on infrastructure,
telematics, maintenance, vehicles, driver education, legislation and
other.

The
regions that should be a covered and are a part of the study are
Northern Finland, Northern Norway and Northern Sweden, as well as the
Murmansk and Archangelsk Oblasts, the Republic of Karelia and the
Republic of Komi (i.e. the Barents Region).

Since
STBR aims at increasing the co-operation between transport authorities
in Barents, a steering group will be set up with representatives from
all the road authorities in the region and also the existing network in
theBarents Traffic Safety
Forum.